


The Unwritten Word

by Silmerion



Category: RWBY
Genre: Disability, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Post-Volume 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-05
Updated: 2018-04-05
Packaged: 2019-04-18 19:01:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14219694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silmerion/pseuds/Silmerion
Summary: Nightmares don't have to be brutal, ostentatious affairs. Nightmares can be the moments you won't create, the pleas you won't get to make.





	The Unwritten Word

The nightmares had spooked Blake at first. Yang slept peacefully most nights but the exceptions were messy affairs: Yang would wail and scream bloody murder, muscles bulging savage force against invisible bonds. Blake had jarred her awake the first time, panicked and unsure how better to handle it, and Yang had nearly clocked her before getting her bearings. Now Blake would cradle her lover and whisper soft assurances against her overheated skin until she came around. The dreams weren’t always about the Fall - these days Yang might watch helplessly as Weiss bled out and Cinder turned on Ruby, or reach the relic chamber too late to save her mother - but Adam still took her arm often enough. The pointless guilt this stirred in Blake meant any cuddling she did with her trembling partner was as much for herself as anyone.

So when Blake was awoken for the first time by absence rather than violence, shivering not so much from the Atlesian cold but simply the _not-hot_ , it was a surprise. She swatted at Yang’s side of the bed, confirming her space heater had disappeared, and rose grudgingly to a sitting position. Yang wasn’t anywhere in the suite’s bedroom, but her prosthetic laid obtuse on the end table, certainly not where Blake had last seen it. She wondered how she hadn’t heard Yang take it off.

Yang was hunched over the kitchen island, back mostly to the bedroom door. Even from behind her posture looked severe, jaw and neck wound stern into taut shoulders and jutting ridges of bone. The moonlight might have cast her as a statue if not for her left arm, whose short jerks set a rhythm against Yang’s side. Blake stalled at the bedroom’s threshold and studied the scene, committed this new variation of her lover’s insomnia to memory.

“Yang?” she finally announced.

She was out of the chair in one scrambling motion, rigid, fear that the faunus couldn’t comprehend standing in relief in the midnight dim. “Blake. I didn’t mean to wake you.” No, not fear, exactly - perhaps self-consciousness. Blake could just make out the silhouette of a pencil lying on the table behind Yang. Had she been writing? She took a cautious step forward, but retreated again as her lover flinched.

It always hurt when Yang would push her away. Before the Fall it was a proactive defense, a storm of hot exuberance blasting away whatever front threatened to leave her vulnerable. Blake had discovered a more level Yang since Haven, but her partner was still slow to open up, to cede control even if she never truly had it. Yet the faunus had some experience with trust issues, and she knew how hard Yang was trying for her, even as Blake still held herself partly responsible for them. Eyes never leaving Yang’s, she huffed and donned what she hoped was a comforting smile. She opened her arms, palms low and facing up, a peace offering.

“Hey. Come here.”

Yang’s gaze flickered between her and what little remained of her right arm as consternation flashed across her features. Now her left arm was snaking to the stump, guarding her abdomen as if she wanted to bolt. Blake restrained a frown, knowing it wasn’t the time. “Please?”

At length Yang relented, gait stiff as she strode the ravine between them. Blake met her halfway and enfolded her after a quick kiss to the cheek. Yang’s arm remained stubbornly across her torso, making the hug awkward, but she buried herself in the crook of Blake’s neck like there was nothing between them. The faunus rubbed calming circles into her lover’s back, cooing quietly, and Yang defrosted by degrees. Soon she was breathing evenly, lightly, and she extracted her arm from between them to pull Blake flush.

“Hi,” Yang offered.

Blake accepted. “Hi. Nightmare?”

Yang’s grip tightened minutely. “Yeah.”

Blake could make out the island over Yang’s shoulder. Sure enough, a pencil lay atop a pad of hotel stationary. It was covered in scrawl, but Blake couldn’t quite make it out from this distance. “You were writing.”

“Yeah. It’s, uh, just a little ritual. Haven’t done it in a while.”

Blake pulled back enough to meet Yang’s eyes. Gone was the skittish woman from a few minutes ago, mellowed now to simple bashfulness; it was almost cute. “Can I see?”

Yang’s mouth pulled tight, trepid. “Ugh,” she moaned, rolling her eyes. “You’re gonna laugh.”

“You know I’m not going to laugh,” Blake giggled.

“You _just_ laughed.”

“I’m not going to laugh.”

Yang pulled away, eyes appraising. Blake considered waving it off, assuring her it was fine for tonight, but Yang’s nod interrupted her. “Okay.”

They slipped back to the island. Blake took the chair to Yang’s left and picked up the pad to study it; she noted two pages had already been ripped out and discarded in a crooked pile. In wobbly but legible print, repeating to nearly the bottom of the page, was written

_ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789_

_THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG_

_abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789_

_the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog_

Blake turned to Yang quizzically. “These are...exercises?”

Yang nodded. “Uh huh. It’s…” she cast her eyes down to the countertop, reminiscing. “After the Fall, I had...a lot of time off. I told you Qrow got Ruby and I home right after, yeah?” Blake hummed in assent. “Well, I was, ahah, _disarmed_ for months. Ironwood’s replacement didn’t arrive until I’d had plenty of time to try out life single-handed. Did you know a lot of stuff’s harder? Like, imagine the extra work to brush your teeth. Or do your hair - I eventually gave up and just left it in a ponytail.” Yang grimaced now. “I fought a lot. With Dad. There was this one night back when Ruby was still at home. I was in garbage mode basically all the time then. Dad had cooked these steaks, but I could barely keep the plate still to cut mine. He caught his slip right away, offered to chop it up into bites for me, but that just made me angrier and I flipped the plate pressing too hard. Then _I_ flipped, at him. Not a good scene.

“But the fine motor stuff was the worst. All the shaking I did back then probably made it a lot harder, but...buttons on clothes were such a pain. I’d drop pill bottles trying to one-hand the caps. And,” she gestured toward the pad, “I could barely write. With the CCTS down it wasn’t like I could just call or text. Letters were it, and all I could do was _scribble_. I didn’t even have anyone to write to but I,” she took a steadying breath, “I felt so small. So once I was feeling a little better, I’d practice writing with my left, just like this, when I felt a mood coming on. It didn’t always stop it but it helped, y’know?”

Blake fit the pieces together. “So your nightmare was about writing.”

“I lost my arm again - broke in some fight, I don’t even know how exactly, dream logic. I couldn’t fight anymore, so you all -” Yang rested her forehead in the crook of her thumb, walling her eyes off from Blake’s vision. “You left me here, you had to keep going. And I tried to write you letters but I _couldn’t_ -”

Yang was visibly shaking now, choking back sobs. Blake stood urgently, hugging her partner to her, weaving fingers through golden hair. Yang gripped at Blake’s nightshirt for dear life.

“You would ride us down if we ever tried,” the faunus joked after a beat, and a wet guffaw burst through Yang’s silent hiccups. Blake stroked the blonde’s hair, ruminating. “That’s what my Yang would do. I never met Yang the bedridden sourpuss.”

Yang never missed an opportunity. “Sourpuss is more your thing, babe.”

“That was crass.”

“See? Sourpuss.”

Blake huffed, flicking Yang’s earlobe. “Hey, though. I’m here now, and I’m not going anywhere.” She reached down to lace Yang’s hand in hers, squeezing her reassurance. “ _None_ of us are going anywhere without you, arm or no.”

“I know.” Yang sounded like she wanted to be certain. Her grip on Blake’s hand tightened as she dragged her eyes up to meet her partner’s. “I know you won’t. I love you. I’ll be better in the morning, I promise.” The blonde shrugged like it was no big deal, casting a sidelong grin at the pad on the table.

Blake frowned as she considered her lover, hand in hers fierce and rough with calluses but in that moment so frail. A silly idea took hold, and she sat back down, pressing a fond kiss to Yang’s knuckle before releasing it and turning fully to the counter.

Yang quirked an eyebrow as Blake picked up the pencil in her own left hand. “What are you doing?”

“Trying it,” she explained. “I’ve never written like this before. I want to see if I can do it.” She tore the used page out of the pad and picked a spot to begin her own characters.

Immediately, Blake ran into problems. She abruptly couldn’t recall how to loop an _a_ , the mirror image exploding her directional awareness. After a couple shaky attempts, though, she had a passable imitation of a character. _b_ and _c_ were still slow going but easier, simple curves and lines, and Blake could lift her hand between the strokes on the former. _d_ should have been just as mindless, but somehow writing _b_ moments before had fixated her, and before she knew it she had written the curve the wrong direction. She corrected, but her vertical line was markedly less than, and Blake grumbled before deciding to settle.

 _e_ , Blake found, was impossible. What with her right hand was a subconscious flick of her wrist turned out to require tremendous delicacy to make legible. Only by the third try did her loop start in the right place and with the right angle, but she still couldn’t give the swishing tail enough prominence; it resembled an oblong _o_ more than anything. A fourth attempt, and the swish was much too long. A fifth, and Blake found herself starting in the wrong place again. She cursed. A sixth -

A soft giggle tore Blake’s attention from the page. Yang looked shocked herself, but the laughter only crescendoed until Yang was holding her stomach, her entire body wracked with mirth.

“You’re _\- ahahahaha_ , you’re _terrible_ , Blakey!” Yang exclaimed, any tension left in her body sapped as she lost herself to the fit. Blake balked at the insult, tried to screw up her face into a pout. But Yang’s laughter was infectious, and soon the two were hugging each other tight, riding out the cackles together.

Finally they broke from one another, and Blake caught her partner’s gaze again, so radiant now. “Gods, that’s much harder than it looks. You did this to _relieve_ your frustration?”

“I knew _e_ would get you,” Yang said. “ _e_ ’s one of the worst.”

“Come on. Let’s get back to bed.”

“Yeah,” Yang affirmed. “Let’s go.” They wandered back to slumber, Yang sliding her arm back on before settling.


End file.
